The Potential of the Queer

On José Esteban Muñoz 

“I was a spy in the house of gender normativity.” - José Esteban Muñoz I too have been a spy in the house of gender normativity. This is what I saw: Work, eat, breed. That, in effect, is how production and consumption are supposed to operate. You have to do work in ...
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The Potential of the Queer

A Multi-Campus University in Exile

Then and now

The New School opened on February 10, 1919 in the name of academic freedom -- a cause it heroically defended a second time when Hitler rose to power. In April 1933, Alvin Johnson, the New School’s director, called on American intellectuals to protest the dismissal of hundreds of professors in ...
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A Multi-Campus University in Exile

Love and Hope in the New Left

A Review of Making History, Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America

In the summer of 1974 Dick Flacks, a sociologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, published an article entitled “Making History vs. Making Life: Dilemmas of an American Left” in the political quarterly,Working Papers for a New Society. Long defunct, the publication Working Papers was distinguished, among other things, for ...
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Love and Hope in the New Left

New Blood Brings New Energy to the Democratic Party

Defeating Trump Politically Part 2

“I really like the new crop of young people who were just elected to Congress. They now need to stop acting like young people. It’s time to do that.”--Aaron Sorkin, self-important screenwriter of television shows about politics “What . . . really distinguishes this generation . . . is its determination ...
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On the Origins of the University in Exile

An Excerpt from “A Light in Dark Times”

The New School for Social Research opened in 1919 as an act of protest. Founded in the name of academic freedom, it quickly emerged as a pioneer in adult education -- providing what its first president, Alvin Johnson, liked to call “the continuing education of the educated.” By the mid-1920s, ...
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On the Origins of the University in Exile

How to Live One’s Values in All The “Little” Choices

A Review of Making History, Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America

Living in interesting times is reputedly a curse, but Mickey and Dick Flacks tell a story of such times that makes them positively charming. The title suggests a voyage of discovery, both of each other and of national experiences and values, but the book itself has less to say about ...
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How to Live One’s Values in All The “Little” Choices

Our Sixties: Blowin’ in the Wind

Thinking Morally, Acting Strategically

Making History/Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America is a chronicle of the political and personal lives of progressive activists Richard (Dick) and Miriam (Mickey) Flacks, two of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). As active members of the Civil Rights movement ...
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Our Sixties: Blowin’ in the Wind

Defeating Trumpism Politically, Part 1

Trump’s ‘national emergency’ over a border wall

I started writing my Blue Monday column a little over a year ago. I’ve been so gratified by the many regular readers the column has attracted, and the comments, and criticisms, the column has elicited. The column began as an effort to weave together my passions for politics and music. Over ...
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Defeating Trumpism Politically, Part 1

What to Expect When You Are Expecting Exploitation

An excerpt from ‘Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism’

In a witty, irreverent op-ed piece that went viral, Kristen Ghodsee argued that women had better sex under socialism. The response was tremendous -- clearly, she articulated something many women had sensed for years: the problem is with capitalism, not with us. Ghodsee, an acclaimed ethnographer and professor of Russian and ...
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What to Expect When You Are Expecting Exploitation

Behrouz Boochani and the Biopolitics of the Camp

The New Primo Levi? 

 Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains, a literary sensation upon its publication in Australia in August 2018, and soon to be released in the United States, deserves a place alongside classics of the prison writing genre. [1] At the same time, it contains important lessons for everyone thinking about power in the ...
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